There have been some excellent app submissions for The AdMob Student App Challenge; however, many of these were submitted without having first successfully installed AdMob to their app. This is an important aspect of the challenge, and an app without AdMob will not be eligible for review by our judging panel. The process to install AdMob is straight-forward; continue reading for a how-to on how to monetize your app with AdMob.

Requirements for your app

Make sure you have the latest copy of the Android SDK and that you're compiling against at least Android v3.2 (set target in project.properties to android-13) (or higher). .

The Google Mobile Ads SDK for Android requires a run-time of Android 2.3 or later (set android:minSdkVersion to at least 9 in your AndroidManifest.xml). This means you can develop with the latest version of the Android SDK and your app will still run on an earlier Android version (2.3 minimum).

Steps for incorporating the SDK

Add and reference the Google Play services library project in your Eclipse workspace.

See the Android instructions for how to set up the Google Play services SDK.

Right click on your app project in Eclipse and select Properties.

Select Android and then click Add.... Find the google-play-services_lib project and select OK to add the Google Play services library.

The project now references the Google Play services library.

Add a meta-data tag in AndroidManifest.xml.

Google Play services requires you to add a specific meta-data tag within the element in your app's AndroidManifest.xml. data, can be found at Step 2 here.

Declare com.google.android.gms.ads.AdActivity in the manifest.

The Mobile Ads SDK requires that com.google.android.gms.ads.AdActivity be declared in your app's AndroidManifest.xml. A screenshot can found at Step 3 here.

Set up network permissions in the manifest.

Making ad requests requires these permissions to be declared in the manifest:

INTERNET

Required. Used to access the Internet to make ad requests.

ACCESS_NETWORK_STATE

Optional. Used to check if an internet connection is available prior to making an ad request.

For further questions on the installation process, head to the Google Developers forum, where any questions or troubleshooting can be handled. As always, follow AdMob on Google+ for any new updates, and good luck with the continued development of your app for the contest.